Lankum – “Newcastle”

Later this week, the Irish folk band Lankum are releasing a new album, False Lankum. They’ve shared “Go Dig My Grave” and “The New York Trader” from it already, and today they’re back with another single, their interpretation of the traditional song “Newcastle.”

“We learned this song from Seán Fitzgerald of The Deadlians, whose mother Pauline sang it to him as a child,” the band shared in a statement, continuing:

The tune was first published in ‘The English Dancing Master’ (1651) where it is simply entitled ‘Newcastle’, while the words may be related to a broadside ballad printed in 1620 and entitled ‘The contented Couckould, Or a pleasant new Songe of a New-Castle man whose wife being gon from him, shewing how he came to London to her, & when he found her carried her backe againe to New-Castle Towne.

Listen below.

False Lankum is out 3/24 via Rough Trade Records.